El Greco's St Martin Poem by Morgan Michaels

El Greco's St Martin



His brilliant mare- (a legacy of the Moor?)
is of a brightness
rivaled only by his collar,
and, snorting with indignant righteousness,
spends the centuries glancing away:
long, the way to San Jose,
and, after all, it's just another beggar.

But her rider sees...hmm, what?
A Christos? Universal Fate?
A cold and hungry bloke?
feels his pain,
and, with a beau geste, if ever
there was one, tears
his costly cloak in twain

And shares it- (proof against the dawn and rising tide?
against the chill of falling night?) :
which, I know not- you decide.
Anyway, the oddly comely beggar will sleep tight
tonight, warmer, if not better fed
tossing from this side to the other,
begger's dreams tumbling his head

Like the clouds cartwheeling the sky
above the vanishing spires of Amiens.
'On, already',
prompts the mare, (whose name is Caroline) :
heedless of a deed done for the good of all-
who, what, where, when, how,
or by what prompting, not important, now.

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